A Christmas carol from an East Harlem group to keep their homes

By Albor Ruiz

Dec 26, 2009 | 5:47 PM

They weren't the Christmas carols they would've liked, these Wall Street bankers. But the nearly 50 singers wearing Santa hats had their own ideas.

The carolers, New Yorkers from Community Voices Heard, an East Harlem organization of low-income people, visited the New York Stock Exchange and several top banks on Tuesday. Their purpose was to stage a very singular protest by offering a concert of well-known Christmas music.

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Except that the lyrics were rather unusual: The words were changed to convey the singers' call for fairness, sharing and generosity, qualities very much in tune with the spirit of the season.

"They got their big government bailouts," the carolers sang, "now it's time for Wall Street to give back."

After caroling in the lobby of BNY Mellon headquarters, the group stood on the steps of the Federal Memorial Building, speaking and singing about the need for Wall Street to contribute to a "people's recovery." BNY Mellon is the plaintiff in foreclosure proceedings against the bankrupt British company Dawnay Day, which until October owned 47 apartment buildings in East Harlem with more than 1,000 mostly rent-stabilized units of housing. The company's bankruptcy put the residents in those buildings at risk of losing their homes.

Dawnay Day bought the buildings for an estimated $225 million in 2007, in a neighborhood that was undergoing rapid gentrification at the expense of traditional residents. In those days, it seemed like the real estate boom would go on forever, and the company planned to quickly replace the low-income tenants with affluent ones, charging much higher rents to make a killing. As to the fate of the displaced families, well, that was not their problem.

Then the recession hit hard and the richer tenants Dawnay Day was counting on became scarce. Unable to cover the mortgage costs, and in serious financial straits in Great Britain, Dawnay Day was forced to declare bankruptcy.

This has not been a happy Christmas for the tenants of those buildings, uncertain as they are about the future of their homes. Not surprisingly, many of them were among those protesting outside the BNY Mellon building. They demanded that the properties be sold to some entity responsible enough to keep the rents affordable.

"It is scary thinking you will be homeless at any moment," said Ann Bragg, a Community Voices Heard board member and one of the affected tenants.

Bragg and the group of the carolers wanted to deliver a letter to BNY Mellon CEO Robert Mellon, asking him to meet with the concerned tenants. After they resisted repeated attempts to make them leave the building, a small Christmas miracle took place: Kevin Heine, the bank's director of corporate communications, came down to talk to them. Robert Mellon, he said, was not there, but he [Heine] would give him the letter. Heine also assured the carolers that BNY Mellon would "look into" their demands and said that the bank was open to meet with them.

His words made sense to Bragg and her fellow carolers.

"We are the tenants and should be a part of the process of who will own our buildings next," she said. "We don't want another predatory landlord."

Will the meeting actually happen? More important, if it does, will it help the former Dawnay Day tenants to keep their homes? That remains to be seen, but something is certain: They will keep fighting to remain in those homes.

Hopefully, next Christmas they will have succeeded, and will be able to sing real carols.